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Elias Canetti Quotes

1905–1994 Bulgaria

Elias Canetti (25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) was a Bulgarian modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981.

Bulgaria
Essayists
Memoirists
Nobel laureates
Non-fiction authors

Random Elias Canetti quote

38 quotes

The once-seen does not exist yet. The always seen no longer exists.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

“He is a lesser figure than X”—how it pleases an Englishman to say that! Never suspecting what basement that would put him in, a wood louse.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

A mind, lean in its own language. In others, it gets fat.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Montaigne the I-sayer. “I” as space, not as position.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

The story of your youth must not turn into a catalog of what became important in your later life. It must also contain the dissipation, the failure, and the waste.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Whenever the truth threatens, he hides behind a thought.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

One who, alone, would be unconquerable. But he weakens himself with allegiances.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

I can’t be twenty-two again. I can’t subject myself to the same compulsion that, at the time, appeared to me as freedom and gave me wings.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Nothing was better for you than humiliation, for there was nothing you felt more deeply.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

One should tell oneself how fruitful misunderstandings are. One shouldn’t despise them. One of the wisest people was a collector of misunderstandings.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

I repulse death with all my strength. If I accepted it, I would be a murderer.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.

When I leaf through Fackel issues of my slave years, I am seized by horror. Anyone released from bondage must feel like this.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

You can tirelessly keep on reading the same author, revere, admire, praise him, exalt him to the skies, know and recite each of his sentences by heart, and yet remain completely unaffected by him, as if he had never demanded anything of you and not said anything at all.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

You don’t have to know a philosopher’s every syllable to know why he rubs you the wrong way. You may know it best after a few of his sentences, and les and less well after that. The important thing is to see his web and move away before you tear it.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

I noticed in the front row a small, very pale, almost white man, old, tremendously alert, old in the only way I love old age, namely more alive for all the years, more attentive, more unrelenting, expectant and ready, as though he still had to make up his mind about most things and must not disregard anything.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

I was never drawn to experiment with language; I take note of such experiments, but avoid them in my own writing. The reason is that the substance of life claims me completely. To indulge in linguistic experiments is to ignore the greater part of this substance, leaving all but a tiny portion untouched and unused, as if a musician were to ceaselessly play an instrument with his little finger only.

Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock (1987)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Elias Canetti (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.